stone study

Posted on May 10, 2011 by albatz

May 10th – studies of rocks (one-a-day project).

I tried to take some photos of beach stones, but my first attempt, against a backdrop of mossy bricks, looked awful. Back to the drawing board, literally, where I reworked an old experimental painting of rocks to use as a background. Since it’s from a decade ago I can’t remember exactly what I used or what I was thinking of at the time, but it appears to be of some sort of plaster that didn’t adhere too well, and heavily gouged. Taking all my gray and black acrylics I proceeded to make a new dark background. As most of the acrylics hadn’t been opened in 11 years they were in pretty poor shape and required the removing of heavy plastic gunk and remixing. Although I took photos of the background, it really isn’t very pretty, so I’ll skip those shots. The acrylics I rescued: Mars Black, Payne’s Grey (deep bluish grey), stainless steel (silvery metallic), a pre-mixed grey (more about that later), fluorescent blue, cobalt blue. What was interesting is that the particles of silver from the stainless steel registered as little white stars in the background of the photos.

I have some more thinking to do about photographing the rocks themselves. I splashed water on them to make the patterns show up but this caused a shiny super reflective surface. Perhaps a better camera with a polarizing filter will show up the patterns better.

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‘shell game’ necklace and earrings

Posted on May 10, 2011 by albatz

May 9th – part of my one-a-day projects

Picked up these marvelous shells on a beach in Costa Rica. My first thought was to pick the two closest in size to each other, and link them with brass to make earrings, and then use the rest as links in a necklace. As I expected they look good with sea glass, but I am not quite ready to experiment with drilling glass. However, in the process of looking for suitable sea glass ‘imitations’ I found these light blue beads strung on raffia, and I really like the way the raffia looks with the shells.

shell rings & beads test

shell rings & beads test

As usual I gathered all the possibilities together. Not as usual I scanned them. One of the decisions was brass or copper or linen cord, and I definitely like the copper best. The problem with copper is that I wanted to use some chain and I don’t have any copper chain. So maybe I will try using cord, something I haven’t done much of. Below are a couple of ‘inspirations’ for this piece from Islita, a tiny art town on the Nicoya coast of Costa Rica.

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experimenting with desaturation

Posted on May 9, 2011 by albatz
Last week we went to Artists in our Midst and saw some interesting photos that had been desaturated, the opposite of usual. The photographer had printed these desaturated photos on huge canvases and the result had the odd effect of looking like a photo and then switching over to looking like a painting, and then back to a photo. Interesting eye confusion.  Tried desaturating one of my Van Dusen shots, late at night while sipping vermouth.

my purple parrot tulip desaturated

my purple parrot tulip desaturated

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using motion blur

Posted on May 9, 2011 by albatz

I had to photograph the lab skills competition for the ‘Outreach’ portion of the web. The big problem is that most of the students are under 18 and not able to give permission to put their photos up on the web. I was thinking maybe a long shot of a lot of backs, and perhaps some close-ups of hands. Then one of the graduate student assistants suggested just blurring their faces like you see on TV. Brilliant!

I put the ISO down to 100 and shot from a tripod so there was a lot of motion blur, then added a bit more blur in Photoshop. I only needed one shot and here it is; just look at those kids scurry around the lab!

Lab with motion blur, both real and photoshopped

Lab with motion blur, both real and photoshopped

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purple parrot tulip sketch and photo(s)

Posted on May 9, 2011 by albatz

April 30th – the first of my one-a-day projects

Sketch of tulip, and then, since that only took 15 minutes, another sketch, this time the Euphorbia – too complex actually. Should have worn my glasses; stone was bloody cold to sit on, grass was wet. Next time use my little traveling stool. It’s like I have to start all over again, I’ve forgotten even the basics. Later I took some reference photos using a burgundy matte board as a background to fool my camera into focusing where it was supposed to. (These turned out well, but perhaps a charcoal background would have been more dramatic.)

slightly shaky tulip sketch
slightly shaky tulip sketch
my purple parrot tulip

my purple parrot tulip with burgundy matte board background

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drunken sambal spot prawns (& advice on building up flavours)

Posted on May 8, 2011 by albatz

It was pouring earlier but later, when it stopped raining, I headed out to the Spot Prawn Festival, only to find that everyone else had headed out as well. I seemed to be always in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, I did manage to go to one extremely interesting cooking demonstration by Tina Fineza of the Flying Tiger, and got a fabulous recipe for Sambal Spot Prawns.

spot prawns at Granville Island market

spot prawns at Granville Island market

The most interesting part of the demo was how Tina emphasized ‘building up flavours’, which echoed what Chef Rossana at my Mexican cooking class emphasized.

Sambal Drunken Prawns

  • Start with putting 2 tbsp finely chopped shallots in a pan with oil on medium heat. After a minute or so add 2 tbsp minced garlic and ‘sweat’ (as opposed to browning) the ingredients for another 2 or 3 minutes. (This ‘builds’ a melded flavour layer)
  • Add 1/4 cup wine – your favourite Reisling. (This ‘builds’ flavour by deglazing the pan)
  • Add 3 tbsp sambal oelek, 2 tbsp salt and 3 tbsp sugar (The sugar ‘builds’ flavour by caramelizing the shallot/garlic mix)
  • Reduce liquid for about a minute (This intensifies the flavours)
  • Raise heat and add the prawns. Also add 1 tbsp butter. (The butter emulsifies the sauce, whatever that means). In about a minute or so the slight translucency of the prawns turns solid and they are done
  • Arrange on a plate
  • Further reduce the sauce by half.
  • Pour over prawns and garnish with cilantro sprigs. Serve with crusty bread and leftover Reisling
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mysterious powders revealed

Posted on May 7, 2011 by albatz

Earlier in the week, while doing a ‘art set-up’ in the basement, I opened a torn brown paper bag with what I thought was acrylics in it. Instead I found about 20 white jars and several bags of spices. I threw out the spices, and shook the white jars; they were very light, I suspected dried-up acrylic. But no. Powder mostly, like powder paint, and water-soluble like gouache. Later I went down with my glasses on and looked at the labels. They are all by Kokali, and labeled starter kit, silver, bronze, etc. One is labeled ‘coagulant’. I have absolutely no memory of buying these, no idea of what they are used for. Later I found some more of the mysterious Kokali stuff, these labeled ‘soda ash’ and ‘blue luster’.

On Saturday I went to Opus and the girl at the counter told me that ‘soda ash’ is used for fabric dying, so I carried on to Maiwa where they concurred. I must have bought the whole bag at a garage sale or something, quite a haul from the sound of it, and “now I can start a whole new hobby”, the saleswoman says and laughs at my look of dismay.

“I try and spend at least 15 minutes a day weaving,” she says helpfully. I guess we’re all trying to do what ever we can to keep some creativity in our life…

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bend, fold and mutilate: jungle palm art

Posted on May 6, 2011 by albatz

May 6th (one-a-day project).

Actually tried out a bit of painting this morning, starting with coating some seed pods I’d gathered with acrylic medium, to see if I could make them less brittle. But the medium was too thick to use so I diluted it with water and shook the bottle like crazy that resulted in milky foam all over my first pod. I washed that off and tried the mysterious slime instead – it’s not medium because medium is milky (dries clear). We’ll see.

jungle palm at Hanging Bridges, Costa Rica

Next I tried painting some greeny tones on translucent rag which I had scored and folded to mimic an intriguing palm tree. So much I have forgotten: how to mix colours, what to use underneath to prevent the paint from destroying my desk, that I need water in order to mix the paint! However, the piece dried in an interesting manner, curled up on one end.

May 9 update: gessoed an water-damaged piece of masonite, and pasted down the folded piece with medium. Painted the back of the curl blue and it curled up even more.

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thinking in black & white

Posted on May 6, 2011 by albatz

May 5th: Still trying to do my one-a-day creative project.

Part of the list for my first mixed media class asks us to bring 3 to 10 hi-contrast black and white laser photocopies to transfer to our artwork. So now I have been thinking in black & white, and somehow my mind got stuck at ‘granite’. Perhaps it was while I was changing the rocks in the tumbler… anyway when I saw the sparkly carborundum grit used for tumbling, I thought that I might somehow be able to use it together with plaster for a ‘granite‘ painting, inspired by the plaster walls embedded with mirror that I saw in India. Or perhaps graphite would work better?

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the Frida Kahlo stone

Posted on May 3, 2011 by albatz

May 2 & 3:  my one-a-day art project

Ended up doing TWO projects today despite being still busy, voting plus it was pouring out. Just clearing space to work is time-consuming. Pulled up my shells to make earrings, and my Frida Kahlo stone, but then had to do a bunch of filing just to get the drawer with my stones open. I also put in a search to find my sketchbooks but in the process found my watercolour paints, probably all dried out though!

Frida Kahlo Stone with Turquoise test

I liked the way that the shape of the oval turquoise stones echoed that of The Stone

The Frida Kahlo stone… I matched it to a bunch of stones but in the end only the crudely-shaped stones looked right; the rest were too smooth, too modern, too manufactured. Bone was the wrong color; shell seemed to be speaking a different language.

The best stones to go with my Frida Kahlo stone were orangy reds in the form of carnelian and coral and/or turquoise, especially some of my old ‘natural’ turquoise. Most turquoise currently available now is impregnated with resin (if not completely resin), and has a waxy sheen that looks artifical compared to The Stone.

Frida Kahlo Stone with Carnelian TestI got out my Frida Kahlo calendar. Although none of the necklaces she wore resembled my stone, I did notice that they were all very short, chokers mainly, which makes sense considering the weight of the large stones. I also looked up some precolumbian necklaces on my favourite antique jewelry site: http://www.oldbeads.com/americas.html

Already having trouble keeping with the half-hour limit on projects; what if the project takes 3 hours? 40 hours? What if I want to carry on exploring the project and I don’t have time? Originally I was thinking one sketch, one really thought-out photo session, one piece of jewelry… so for now I have done divided this project into two different necklaces:

Project 1: the Stone mixed with turquoise. This is just put together with fishing line, very rough. I originally liked the way that the shape of the oval turquoise stones echoed that of ‘The Stone’. Now I’m not so sure. The big stone looks too white and divorced from the rest of the necklace, although the sea urchin spine picks up some white, and I can probably find another spine with a white edge. Maybe add a shell and turquoise dangle. Hmmm…

Frida Kahlo turquoise

Frida Kahlo turquoise

Project 2: the Stone (all right, a different stone, but similar) mixed with carnelian, jasper  and coral. Like the necklace above this is just put together very roughly. I haven’t yet decided whether or not to use coral or brown shell for the small beads (or both?).

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